How are children so badly warped and abused that they grow up as movement conservatives?

Paul Krugman explains what attitudes you have to have to be a movement conservative:

...modern movement conservatism attracts a certain personality type. If you identify with the downtrodden, even a little, you don’t belong. If you think ridicule is an appropriate response to other peoples’ woes, you fit right in.

And Republican disillusionment with Mr. Bush does not appear to signal any change in that regard. On the contrary, the leading candidates for the Republican nomination have gone out of their way to condemn “socialism,” which is G.O.P.-speak for any attempt to help the less fortunate.

So once again, if you’re poor or you’re sick or you don’t have health insurance, remember this: these people think your problems are funny.

It's obvious when it's pointed out. This is how Bush thinks:

Mark Crispin Miller, the author of “The Bush Dyslexicon,” once made a striking observation: all of the famous Bush malapropisms — “I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family,” and so on — have involved occasions when Mr. Bush was trying to sound caring and compassionate.

Ronald Reagan, of course, had his contribution:

Ronald Reagan thought the issue of hunger in the world’s richest nation was nothing but a big joke. Here’s what Reagan said in his famous 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” which made him a national political figure: “We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”

Then this is from Bill Krystol:

In anticipation of the veto, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, had this to say: “First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the president’s willing to do something bad for the kids.”

And of course, the great mouthpiece for the conservative movement, Rush Limbaugh, contributed this:

Before the last election, the actor Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s and has become an advocate for stem cell research that might lead to a cure, made an ad in support of Claire McCaskill, the Democratic candidate for Senator in Missouri. It was an effective ad, in part because Mr. Fox’s affliction was obvious.

And Rush Limbaugh — displaying the same style he exhibited in his recent claim that members of the military who oppose the Iraq war are “phony soldiers” and his later comparison of a wounded vet who criticized him for that remark to a suicide bomber — immediately accused Mr. Fox of faking it. “In this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking. And it’s purely an act.”

This is the core of the conservative movement philosophy. It comes down to "I've got mine. Get out of my way, you failed subhumans!"

Movement conservatism can be rephrased as You can only have those goods and services that you are strong enough, healthy enough, sly enough and mean enough to grab from others and hold on to.

The first movement conservative corollary is You worth as a human being is measured by how large the pile of toys you hold on to and sit on is, and how many servants you control who contribute to your pile of toys and who shout your praises to the masses.

The second movement conservative corollary is If your strength, health, or ruthlessness fails, anyone who stops to help you will be ostracized for their weakness.

If homo sapiens had acted that way in pre-history then the human race would have never survived the several ice ages. Human beings survive by cooperating as groups rather than as superior individuals because almost all predators on humans were individually more effective than individual humans. Empathy and cooperative group activity have been an evolutionary requirements for survival of the human race. As the human race moves forward into further challenges (global warming, running out of oil, over-population, etc.) it will require cooperative action between people rather than slavish obedience to generally ignorant leaders who are generally disinterested in learning new solutions to the new problems. All of this requires empathy.

Most human beings naturally develop empathy for others as they are growing up. Children are programmed to learn empathy like they are programmed to learn language. Parents have to somehow beat this empathy out of their children to create people like those who have grown up to create the conservative movement.

The very existence of the conservative movement shows that there is a massive sub-culture of child abusers raising children without empathy here in America. Some form of intervention in these failed families is necessary, and the abused off-spring need to be relegated to dark basements or attics unless or until some form of effective therapy can be developed. They certainly need to be removed from government.